Cannot create icon for shortcut due to unknown file

[publicq]

To whomever may be able to offer assistance:

I frequently run into a problem, going back over many repackaging efforts over the past few years and adminstudio versions (I started using it w/ version 7), where, when repackaging a software install, I run into an error along the lines of:

Cannot create icon for shortcut 'xyz' due to unknown file 'xyzpath\xyz.ico'

Normally, I just work around this by manually fixing the shortcut icon in InstallShield; however, I'm currently working on a package that has a large number of shortcuts (about 60 total) that are *all* getting this same error, and would like to avoid this workaround if possible. (The icons also all say that they can't be created as advertised shortcuts, but I'm less concerned about that.)

Does anyone know any root causes/solutions/etc. pertaining to this I could try out? Previous mentions of this error that I've found in these forums have related to either a) the icon residing inside a corrupt exe (not the case here, they're all separate ico files) or b) a typo in the path such as a slash following the .ico extension (I've confirmed that the paths are all correct, and all the ico files do exist in the repackager folder in the specified paths). I've attached a build log in case there's anything obvious in there that I've missed. Thanks in advance!

[publicq]

1 week bump 🙂

[Cary_R]

Hi There,

Are the paths referenced what's listed in Direct Editor as the 'ISBuildSourcePath'?

[WindowsVolume]CR5000\local\zsys\pix\other\designr.ico

This might be the problem, since property references resolve at runtime, not build time. Maybe a find-and-replace with a path variable will work if this proves to be the problem.

[publicq]

Hi Cary -

I didn't find any references to 'ISBuildSourcePath' in direct editor in the output package. I don't think a search-and-replace is going to help in this case, as the shortcut table is just listing blank entries for the icon files. The inc file from repackager lists the icon files correctly, but when it tries to build the ism those file names don't port over.

It does appear that, in the repackager inc file, the shortcuts are using a path variable - there's an item like this early on:

!Variables
Set('_CR5000','%WindowsVolume%CR5000')

And, further down, the shortcut items all look something like this:

CreateLink('Release Notes','%_CR5000%\help\eng\sd\revup_main.htm','','%_CR5000%\help\sd_note.ico,0','PROGRAMS\CR-5000 System Designer 12.0\Documents\Topics-FAQ','',cgAsCommon)

For this example, I can manually add the %WindowsVolume%CR5000\help\sd_note.ico file as the shortcut's icon in direct editor and it will work (though that's obviously not an ideal workaround w/ so many broken icons).